There is no better feeling when playing this game when hitting a well coordinated attack against the survivors or clearing the special infected and moving forward as a unit with your team.

However, as someone who is new to versus, I find it apalling that so many more experienced players would rather just kick newer players or rage at them rather than offer any sort of advice about spawning or positioning.

"This game went to♥♥♥♥♥♥the moment it went free."-elitist prick 2014

This is all too often a sentiment echoed among the public servers in the past couple weeks as I've been reaquainting myself with this game.

We understand, nobody likes losing, but on some sort of level let's take a step forward with our attitudes so that we can all grow a community within a game WE ALL LOVE. It's the only way this game will have the legacy it deserves rather than being a shrinking community of shriveling♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Luckily, I've found some very awesome friends playing this game who are more than willing to be helpful either by streaming or just inviting me to their games and making great shot calls...Thank you guys, you are a rare breed amongst the ranks of more experienced players.

I want to see this community grow as I'm sure most of you do. What I don't want to see is a decrease in official dedicated servers while being hogged up by the same 100 people every day.

I'm very excited about Turtlerock's new game "Evolve" but I'm doubtful it has the type of competitive tournament potential that Left4Dead2 has.

I'd love to help set up a cash prize tournament and bring this game to its rightful place as a top-tier competitively played game.

If youre the kind of new player that will communicate and listen then YOU dont have anything to worry about. The people that still kick you regardles of that are just *ssholes that kick anybody for any reason anyway.

People harshly abuse and kick newbs/noobs because a *majority* of them tend not to listen or speak and will leave anyway after they f*ck up and die. It happened just earlier in fact.

me going "Hey can you come over here please?" "Can you do this next time?" No not there over here." "No don't go in yet we need to use that over here" "Can you hear us?" "Can you say something?" And so he was kicked not simply because he was a newb, but because he didn't even try to listen to us, or even show signs of being a sentient being. Or learn from his mistakes. or play with the team. This is how *most* (not all) noobs tend to act and therefore force people to dread being around them (in versus anyway)

However if YOU do not play like this then you dont have anything to worry about with the right people.

Agreed, just a little frustrated at the rage I see that isn't always directed at me but just at new players in general.

The right people, who you seem to be among, seem to be few and far between in comparisons to the run-ins with those who just start flaming and kicking.

I've played through all the campaigns many times and watch a lot of pro mod so I have a good idea of how to communicate and play.

I just want this community to grow so we can enjoy this game for a long time. I see the potential in this game to be played competitively at a much bigger and grander stage but that the vast amounts of toxicity toward our newer community severely impedes it.

You're absolutely right though, new people do need to listen but I can understand if they're too occupied with concentrating on their mechanics or the sounds of the game to always pay attention to what people are saying through voice chat.

I always make a habit of typing things out to newer players as well. It does help.

But in versus the hostility isnt always directed towards new players, even experienced ones get kicked sometimes, because of various reasons.As many others already said in other posts: the best course is to get familiar with the game in coop. Meet likeminded people, and start playing versus with them.

Public versus wont change, there always will be newbies who will join a game without even knowing the maps, get kicked in 30 seconds then make a post here about how rude is the vs. community.And also there always will be those more experienced players who kick everyone on sight if they dont meet their standards.

So imagining a big happy L4D2 community is quite utopistic in my opinion.But good to know you are one of those (rare) players who are new to the game yet you know you have to learn, listen to others advices.Gather likeminded friends, play with them and you are ok. Even public versus can be fun if you play with friends vs. strangers.

I just came here after having being kicked twice from games with little explanation. I did pretty well in one of them too. Its not because im not communicating well, because they didn't even speak themselves.

One thing that has helped is that I watch a lot of Promod players and tournaments these days. You can watch streams at Watchl4d.com and see how pro players think, play and communicate with eachother. My personal favorite is a guy called Haxormode on Twitch.tv. http://store.steampowered.com

Look through some of his gameplay, he's a very entertaining guy and the guy is a beast. He can carry any team. Also, very friendly and helpful.

Some people enjoy teaching and have no problem doing it game after game. Sometimes I get in a teaching mood but most of the time I have a few spare precious hours in my now adult life to play a quick pug or two and barking out orders while getting slaughtered for 1.5+hrs is not a good time.

One day youll reach past the noob threshold and will be on the other side of the fence and youll see our light. What always amuses me is how many times Ive seen people post like this on the forums only to be on the other side of this argument several months down the road.

Some people enjoy teaching and have no problem doing it game after game. Sometimes I get in a teaching mood but most of the time I have a few spare precious hours in my now adult life to play a quick pug or two and barking out orders while getting slaughtered for 1.5+hrs is not a good time.

One day youll reach past the noob threshold and will be on the other side of the fence and youll see our light. What always amuses me is how many times Ive seen people post like this on the forums only to be on the other side of this argument several months down the road.

The thing is. It works both ways, it's not like every game all the noobs are on your team and only on your team.

It's also not fun to own the other team within the first hit and watch the whole other team rage-quit because some elitist is mad at his own team.

If you're really that competitive, bring it to promod and show how good you really are. But if you're really THAT good, you should also be able to carry a team with a couple noobs witihout having to "bark" out orders.

It seems an awful lot like highschool how cliquish and petty these games can end up being.

The common sentiment being, "we're losing, I quit" or even more entertaining "we're losing, it's someone else's fault."

But anyways, it's really the l4d2 designs team's issue for not implementing some sort of ranking system to match players of similar skill levels in matches or penalizing players for rage-quitting. It's the system that breeds this sort of toxic behavior, divides and restricts the size of what could possibly be a huge community.

But if you're really THAT good, you should also be able to carry a team with a couple noobs witihout having to "bark" out orders.

Not always true. Doesn't matter how experienced you are, but you're bound to get pinned by some SI eventually. Pair that with newbies with little to no situational awareness and you're pretty much gone. Add a boomer into the mix and even typing/screaming orders into the mic won't make a difference.